Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

White supremacy is terrorism.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Not all heroes wear capes.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

He really is that stupid.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Everybody saw this coming.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Is It Friday Yet?

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Hoarse

(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)


First time I read Mr. Darmofal’s tweet, I was a little… suspicious. But his thesis is beginning to grow on me:

Reader Interactions

244Comments

  3. 3.

    debbie

    I agree with that last tweet. We are lucky to have someone in charge who isn’t focusing on his legacy. He already has that.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    Interesting politico piece on the sausage making.  Ignore the GOP propaganda at the end.

    Democrats race to resolve House-Senate disputes on $3.5T megabill

     

    “It is pushing it. All we can do is try,” said House Budget Chair John Yarmuth.

  5. 5.

    JMG

    I know there are folks on this board for whom this is a regular if scary part of life, but this Massachusetts resident found it very hard to go back to sleep after the phone beeped its 2 am tornado warning and the warning expired 30 minutes later.

  6. 6.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Actually, I’m getting more ageist as I age, because at the cusp of 60, I look at the 70+ crowd as being a lot less indispensable in important positions than they do.

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    I have seen so many of these in my lifetime, as a Black woman in America.

    But, reading this yesterday, even after hearing about the indictments, it broke my heart and made me cry ?.

     

    RIP Elijah ??

     

    Derrick Johnson (@DerrickNAACP) tweeted at 5:56 PM on Wed, Sep 01, 2021:
    Elijah McClain’s final words…

    “My name is Elijah McClain. That’s my house. I was just going home. I’m an introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me?”

    #JusticeForElijahMcClain
    (https://twitter.com/DerrickNAACP/status/1433202130266038278?s=03)

  8. 8.

    MomSense

    My age cohort, Gen X, had their brains wiped by Ronald Raygun. Look at all the Gen X Republican politicians. That’s why. Yes, there are exceptions but, for the most part, Dem pols are Boomers or Millenials.

  12. 12.

    MomSense

    @rikyrah:

    The police even attacked the musicians who went to the park to play in his honor.  He was a beautiful soul.  I hope his murderers are convicted.

  14. 14.

    MattF

    OT. There is a kind of skunk that performs a hand-stand before it sprays you. An expert on these creatures says they mostly keep to themselves and don’t spray if you approach quietly, but ‘… some of them are just jerks’.

  15. 15.

    Kay

    @JMG:

    Tornados are scary. I don’t go down in the cellar anymore at the first warning because I found out what they sound like when they’re closer and you really can’t miss it. It sounds like a train.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    If a blue state allowed bounties against religious practices or against corporations who break the law, I’m confident the vote would have come out differently.

  18. 18.

    debbie

    @JMG:

    I lived in different parts of New England for about 25 years and only remember tornadoes occurring once, so I understand your shock. Not that those middle-of-the-night buzzes help the situation…

  19. 19.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I think the dissents are important because most people (most of the small group who will read about it at all) will read the quotes pulled from the dissents.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The bounties are only the official money behind it. Right wing donors can pump it full of money and pay the deputized- citizen pregnancy investigators and fund the litigation. They can bury people. They won’t have a chance.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @rikyrah: 

    Why was there a safe space in the first place? We’re the exact opposite for the right. They invent threats to be outraged by them, and we ignore threats that are right in front of face yelling at us about how much of a threat they are.

  26. 26.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    A tornado caused some damage in Annapolis yesterday. WTF! It was a few miles from where lived for 4 years. Madness.

  28. 28.

    Kay

     

    They can create and fund a whole private “law enforcement system” composed entirely of far Right investigators on a religious/ideological mission to turn in their neighbors. Well, “neighbors”. They’ll be professionals posing as citizen-enforcers of the new pregnancy laws so “neighbors” is a stretch. They won’t actually reside in your neighborhood. They’ll have a PO Box in suburban DC environs.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Sotomayor

    In effect, the Texas Legislature has deputized the State’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    She’s great. I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with a SCOTUS like I agree with her approach and her general philosophy.

  35. 35.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m glad they already set up a website to list and target the potential pregnancy law violators. They’d deny it if we hadn’t seen it.

    Gross. The authoritarian impulse is always right there. They can’t wait to haul people in on charges.

  39. 39.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Couple of salient observations:

    1. If a howling pack of enraged women chased down Leonard Leo and hacked him up into little Leonard Leo pieces with machetes and splitting mauls, I’d want it on video so I could watch each scream over and over.

    2. Burn Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Duke to the ground. Scatter and salt the rubble.

  41. 41.

    Denali

    I can’t believe the Supreme Court let the bounty hunters provision stand. What are we East Germany?  The only alternative, as Betty Bowers suggested, is to flood the hotline with bogus reports. It is insane.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    I hope those bounty hunters are in turn sued for harassment and false arrest (or whatever they’re calling it there).

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Whether its forced birth or regulating private business’s right to deny service to antivaxxers, when I think of Texas, the word that comes to mine is FREEDOM.

  45. 45.

    Shakti

    MoveOn  is asking to sign a petition to Democratic members of Congress and three bucks is going to help. I feel like they always ask this. They’re not pretending that talking to Republican members of Congress is going to do anything, so progress?

    I don’t see any bills in the FL statehouse, (which is Republican super-majority) on this Texas law template. Usually with something so heinous they have ALEC style bills popping up everywhere ready to go, like they did with SB1070 type bills. Could be that I’m checking too soon.

    I’m guessing this “Parental Rights Bill” is a “don’t give my kid a covid vaccine bill”

  46. 46.

    SFAW

    @rikyrah:

    Not sure what Cohen’s point is. Collins is Senator-for-Life, as most Rethug Senators are, because there is almost NOTHING a Rethug could do to make his/her supporters vote for a Demon-crap. I have, more than once, tried to conjure a scenario where Party of Traitors voters will get so disgusted with their (usually) boy that they vote for a Dem. Maybe I’m not imaginative enough, but I can’t come up with one.

    And, as the 2020 vote shows, a lot of the “independents” won’t either. Mainers voted for Collins because Sara Gideon wasn’t born there? WTF?

  49. 49.

    Starfish

    @MJS: People have already been stuffing the reporting system until they get their IPs banned. Anyway, remember to use a VPN when you stuff the reporting system so that you cannot get banned by IP.

  50. 50.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    “I won’t be blackmailed into supporting a neoliberal corporate shill like Hillary just because of the Supreme Court. My vote is MINE and must be earned!”

  54. 54.

    Kay

    @kristoncapps
    ·31m
    “The Court’s inaction has had immediate impact. Two hours before the Act took effect, one applicant reported that its waiting rooms were ‘filled with patients’ urgently seeking care while ‘protesters [we]re outside, shining lights on the parking [lot].’”

    Deputized far Right prenancy police already on the beat.

    Wait until you see the lavish funding of the lawsuits. In 6 months there will be pregnancy investigators making big salaries based on number of people they target. The Right pays really, really well.

  55. 55.

    Woodrow/asim

    Not directed to anyone here, just…I really could give a damn about whose Democrat’s fault this is, at this point. That’s for another time, y’all! People — especially those without means to travel outside Texas and the other states that will surely follow suit — are going to be in even more harm than they already were.

    Roe was already, for far too many people, a Dead Letter for years. People have been fighting to keep abortion an option for too long, and they need more help — more HOPE — than ever before.

    I might suggest to this blog to gather up some of the abortion groups on the ground in Texas, for a front-page post to point people to supporting them?

    Here’s who I have, so far:

    https://janesdueprocess.org

    https://fronterafundrgv.org/

    https://www.theafiyacenter.org/

    https://teafund.org/

    https://www.lilithfund.org/

    https://fundtexaschoice.org/

    https://www.clinicaccess.org/

    https://www.westfund.org/

    https://www.bucklebunnies.org/

    https://www.raicestexas.org/ (NOTE: RAICES has explicitly said they will not respect SB6)

    There are some ActBlue efforts, as well; I’ve not cataloged them yet.

  56. 56.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    Gross. The authoritarian impulse is always right there. They can’t wait to haul people in on charges.

    I don’t recall if Texas is a Stand Your Ground state, but it would be interesting to contemplate. If some non-LEO person is trying to detain me, and I’m in fear of my life, can I respond as if I’m in fear of my life? Of course, the persons standing their ground would still be prosecuted, because now vigilantes are “duly-appointed law enforcement officers,” so tough shit for me.

    In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not a lawyer. But it would seem to be an interesting scenario.

  58. 58.

    Joe Falco

    @MJS: 

    There’s already people suggesting overloading the abortion Stasi website with fake reports. Not sure if it’ll be effective, but it sounds like an idea in the right direction.

  59. 59.

    Starfish

    @John S.: But this “I am not in any party” thing is usually just young folks who think “disengaged” is a sign of their intelligence.

    I mean, I know we were a generation of social outcasts that hated institutions, but we are slowly learning that some of the punk heroes were just contrary to things that were popular as they turn out to have some really terrible positions as they age.

  60. 60.

    Woodrow/asim

    I’m in the spam filter, help! :)

    I posted a bunch of links to Texas folx fighting this, and I reckon the spam caught me (I forget about it!) Can some kind person check the backend and see if this is the case?

    Thanks!

  61. 61.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @rikyrah:

    Oh, Sheldon, my sweet summer child. Precedent doesn’t matter now, but when it’s all conservative precedent, it’ll be all majestic and shit, part of the Great and Abiding Canon of Western Law and Culture. Like Colossus standing astride a great harbor, it’ll be unmovable.

  66. 66.

    Joe Falco

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Precedent doesn’t matter now, but when it’s all conservative precedent, it’ll be all majestic and shit, part of the Great and Abiding Canon of Western Law and Culture. Like Colossus standing astride a great harbor, it’ll be unmovable

    See 2nd Amendment SCOTUS ruling for individual right to boomsticks.

  67. 67.

    Ohio Mom

    @JMG:

    Some pro tips:
    A tornado watCh means weather conditions could create a tornado; a tornado waRning means one has been sighted. The mnemonic device is C comes before R.

    When we get a warning, we check the local news stations. Their meteorologists will be in front of a weather map, explaining where the storm is and which way it is heading.

    If the problematic area is say, twenty miles south of us, or way to the east, we turn over and go back to sleep.

    In the twenty years we’ve lived in this house, there have been only two occasions we felt it necessary to go down to the basement until the warning was lifted, watching the news on our phones the whole time.

    I’ve always listened for the rumbling train-coming-down-the- track sound but the closest a tornado has ever gotten to us is four miles to the north and by coincidence we were out of town then.

  69. 69.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Kay: In 6 months there will be pregnancy investigators making big salaries based on number of people they target. The Right pays really, really well.

    I was going to make a comparison to the Fugitive Slave Laws before I redirected my spam-caught post. It’s true — they’ll create “non-profits” that fundraise off supporting people who play PI on abortion-seekers, while pouring the billionaire bucks into those groups. The people with means will just “vacation” for their abortions, leaving the poor and marginalized to be targeted — just as they already are for so much.

    It’s worse than I feared, years ago. I used to say SCOTUS would never kill Roe directly — just drag on Roe, allowing a 1000 State-level cuts to keep milking it for money and votes. This not only spreads it out into the citizens, it makes it lucrative to hate on people getting abortions! It’s a near-perfect storm for the citizens already riled up by Right-Wing propaganda.

    SHIT.

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    Kay, I love reading your comments, but sometimes you depress the shit out of me. [Not complaining about you, just unhappy that the country has gotten to this stage.]

  73. 73.

    Starfish

    @Denali: This paper on getting around the Great Firewall in China explains it in the “Circumvention” section. I think I really meant proxy when I said VPN, but the goal is the same. It is to make your web traffic look like it is coming from not you.

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    @WaterGirl:

    Your comment at #55 is now free.

    Can you work some of that magic in TX, FL, MS, AL, OK, etc? Because freedom seems to be in ever-shorter supply there.

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    @JMG: after the phone beeped its 2 am tornado warning and the warning expired 30 minutes later.

    I understand it can be nerve-wracking if you’re not used to it. I once talked to a woman who had moved here from Colorado in 1983 right before we had a big tornado that actually did quite a bit of damage. She said she thought the sirens were air raid sirens, and wondered if bombs were going to be dropped! I’m so used to those warnings that unless they say “There is a tornado in north Springfield” I just ignore them, especially when they say the tornado is “radar indicated”. That means no one has actually seen a tornado, they just think there is one in the clouds somewhere. I only care about the ones that could do actual damage. One of our local TV stations loves what I call “weather porn”, where they have with constant storm coverage for hours at a time. The problem is, most of the people in the path of the storm can check their phones to see what is happening – they don’t need wall-to-wall coverage on TV anymore.

  76. 76.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Kay: peter thiel has just announced friendship ended with j.d. antivaxxx

    texas abortionist bounty law is new best friend

  77. 77.

    Peale

    @MJS: really depends on how much cruelty you’re willing to inflict on  innocent bystanders that you’re trying to protect. If it were a much crueler me, I’d start stalking the hospitals and OBGYNs and their staffs in the districts of the sponsors of this bill. Drive them out of the business of treating pregnancy in the district. A win would be a hospital that can no longer deliver babies. Make tye obgyns in that district have to spend so much time traveling to court around the state that they can’t see patients at all. It’s cruel, but it’s a better plan than flooding the hotline with spurious cases. Target places to break the healthcare routines of tge places that elect these people. If they want to stop abortion even when medically necessary, why should they have doctors and nurses and modern medicine at all?

  79. 79.

    SFAW

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    “I won’t be blackmailed into supporting a neoliberal corporate shill like Hillary just because of the Supreme Court. My vote is MINE and must be earned!”

    “Give me a reason to vote for Hillary, but without using the words ‘Trump’ or ‘Supreme Court.’ ”

    As I’ve noted more than a few times in the past, I actually heard a “Democrat” say that during the 2016 campaign.

  80. 80.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Kay: sotomayor is my favorite supreme since souter

    fitting she was nominated to fill the vacancy ol’ dave created

  82. 82.

    SFAW

    @WaterGirl:

    If only I could!

    If I wrote a strong letter to Cole, would he increase your privs? That might do the trick.

    [Don’t worry, I WOULDN’T USE ALL CAPS.]

  83. 83.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SFAW:

    “Give me a reason to vote for Hillary, but without using the words ‘Trump’ or ‘Supreme Court.’ ”

    Hillary, hell, they were saying pretty much the same about Biden post Coney-Barrett. “He needs to give me a reason…”

  84. 84.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Luckily, I’ve never had that particular experience with a tornado. My paternal grandmother was picked up and carried by a tornado when she was 11. She had a bump on her foot from it that made it hard for her to wear most shoes, but otherwise she was unharmed (except mentally, I cannot imagine how terrifying that was for an 11-year-old girl).

  86. 86.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Denali: nah, we’re romania

    didn’t see ceausescu getting to be a part of national-conservative mythos, what with how lionizing a romanian will rub the nat-cs boy orban the wrong way, but here we are

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    Just saw some Twitter kid lol’ing about how there’s no reason to vote Democratic in the midterms because, among other things, they “failed to protect reproductive rights”. If that’s a common attitude we’re fucked.

    (Fucking government, how does it work?)

  91. 91.

    Woodrow/asim

    Hey gang — unless you’re comfortable with VPNs and masking yourself online, I would not recommend mucking around with that shit abortion-hunting website.

    If the private entity that hosts that site decides to get harsh and go after what they would call malicious posts (likely with Texas’ help), the fact is that a lot of VPNs do keep logs for longer than they really should, and thus could have those logs pulled into court. That’s outside of VPNs that just don’t do a great job of masking you, to begin with.

    That’s why I posted the links to the people fighting this on the ground, y’all. It’s not as fun to work with them, but like when we won Georgia, that kind of money and support isn’t flashy or feel-good — it’s just getting the good work done. :)

  92. 92.

    debbie

    Unsurprisingly, Glenn  Beck is celebrating. Click. It gave me an idea. I want to figure out how to get the names of RWNJ radio hosts’ daughters and file many, many reports at that website about their abortion-loving ways.

  94. 94.

    Denali

    @Starfish,

     

    Thanks  from an old lady. Sounds too techy for me to pay to join a private network.

  98. 98.

    Soprano2

    @Ohio Mom: That is a great tornado primer. I do the same thing, mostly ignore the warnings unless they’re really close to where I am at the time.

  99. 99.

    Starfish

    @Denali:

    BREAKING: An anti-abortion anonymous tipline in Texas is being spammed by TikTokers sending Shrek memes.
    — No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) September 2, 2021

    The kids these days really are a lot of fun.

  101. 101.

    252man

    Here’s an idea for the women of Texas as a means of protest: tell their male SO that their sex life is suspended until this law is repealed.

  102. 102.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    The bounties are only the official money behind it. Right wing donors can pump it full of money and pay the deputized- citizen pregnancy investigators and fund the litigation. They can bury people. They won’t have a chance.

    Yes, this is exactly what is going to happen. The people filing civil suits under the Texas law will not be a nosy neighbor, but well funded forced birth activists who will strategically target providers and people to make getting an abortion impossible in Texas.

    They won’t go after the upper middle class white family seeking an abortion or Christian kooks like them (at first, at least), but target it so most people won’t directly feel the impact until abortion becomes impossible.

    What I wonder is when are they going to start going after pharmacies and pharmacists for selling morning after pills, and other types of birth control, because these forced birth fanatics have a very broad view of what constitutes “abortion”.

  103. 103.

    Suzanne

    @rikyrah: More than any of these police murders (and I will note that they are all devastating and painful), Elijah McClain’s murder is the one that just…. just tears me up.

  104. 104.

    gene108

    @rikyrah:

    NEW: Texas law could flip the script on abortion politics.

    Republicans have benefited from a “safe space” to stir up their base against abortion with little electoral downside as Roe was secure.

    I wonder what the level of news saturation is required to get our side motivated?

    We can get our voters motivated and beat Republicans.

    Republican attempts to kill the ACA helped motivate the hell out of voters in 2018 to defeat Republicans.

  106. 106.

    VOR

    @Ohio Mom: In the old days they would declare a Warning for the entire county. I live at the south end of a county where the north end is 45-50 miles away. These days tornado warnings can be much more selective.

    You have to be careful with tornados. They can spin up fast and a single storm can spawn multiple tornados. They can move fast – per Wikipedia the record is 73 MPH. They can travel distances – the record is the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 which traveled from Missouri through Illinois and into Indiana with a 219 mile track.

    A tornado passed overhead when I was a kid, I’ll never forget it. If we get a tornado warning nearby, I grab the pets and call everyone into the basement to wait it out.

  108. 108.

    Peale

    @gene108: My recommendation is for us to go after those upper middle class white people. There’s no reason the poor need to bear the brunt of it. Make pregnancy really expensive for them. They can bear the cost. We talk about how Texas is so bad that women already have to drive 100s of miles to find an abortion provider. Go after those doctors with upper middle class clients and make those people have to go out of state to get any OB care because their doctor can’t see patients right now. Sorry, but the quicker the upper middle class has to suffer for voting for this crap the more likely it is going to end.

    We’re dealing with people who fundamentally believe that birth is a miracle and at any time God can change His mind and start that heartbeat again. I don’t think we should just sit by and try and send shrek photos to hotlines and should not make this so that only poor women feel the brunt of this madness. If it mainly falls on the poor it will never be changed

    The upper middle class should probably leave the state whenever they are pregnant anyway. California has 4 pregnancy related deaths per 100K. Texas is already at 32. Its much better to leave for 9 months. Not just for abortion – but for all pregnancy care. Make them do it.

  111. 111.

    Feathers

    Apparently, only one suit per abortion is allowed, so one strategy is to arrange for a friendly suit, settle it, pay them the $10,000 which they then return to you. Does anyone know if you could do this after someone hostile sues you?
    h/t Tweet from Courtney Milan

  112. 112.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @gene108: i think the plan there is to get more liberty school of pharmacy grads in the druggists stores & having them conscientiously object to dispensing abortifacients

  113. 113.

    Soprano2

    Also, that stuff the court said about this not being about Roe is complete bullshit, and I wish all the reporting would recognize that. If this had been a law affecting some conservative’s religious liberty, they would have found a way to block it, of that I am certain.

  114. 114.

    debbie

    @gene108:

    It feels to me like this time, they really overreached, and it will come back to bite them in the collective asses. Fingers crossed.

  115. 115.

    hueyplong

    @Feathers: My knee-jerk reaction to that suggestion is to like it.

    My worry is that the Texas law (or court procedures), which I haven’t read, might call for consolidation of any cases so that a Texas judge will have any shenanigans in front of him and perhaps the ability to stop them (such as any settlement requiring court approval, etc.).

  117. 117.

    RaflW

    David Brooks, not content with just blathering at the NYT, has managed to get a front page item at The Atlantic. I’m a subscriber, and they publish quite a bit that is worthwhile, but this? Garbage, and absolutely classic Brooks.

    How the Bobos Broke America
    The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction.
    David Brooks

    Nevermind that he manages to self-reference in the title (and, does anyone call creative types ‘bobos’ except him? What?).

    I won’t click thru to read his tripe. I’m sure it’s a hot commodity but I won’t add myself to his page hits. Just the blurb is enough to know — other cons are working this, uhh, con — that of course liberals in sneering, progressive cities are at fault for small town conservative anger & the Republican refusal to govern collaboratively at all.

    What an absolute load of hooey. Next up from David: Nerds make bullies punch them? (Now that I think of it, I do want to punch him!*)

    *Except I don’t. I hate violence, but the feeling of revulsion I have for him makes me want to swing a roundhouse — if I even had the vaguest idea how!

  118. 118.

    glory b

    @SFAW: I heard it several times too, on Sirius radio, on several of the shows on the progressive station.

    I’ll take this time to point out that while I like Sirius, it burns me that the right wing station is still called the “Patriot Channel,” the left leaning one is called “Sirius Progressive.”

  119. 119.

    Baud

    @RaflW: 

    The creative class was supposed to foster progressive values and economic growth. Instead we got resentment, alienation, and endless political dysfunction.

    We get progressive values and economic growth where we are allowed to govern.

    Just another chapter in the “only our side has agency” scam.

  120. 120.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

     

    @SFAW: That person is smugly telling everyone “I told you so. Next time, support the TRUE progressive”.

  123. 123.

    JPL

    The best of twitter

    Madeleine L’Engle
    @MadeleineLEngle
    Sep 1
    “Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.” A Wrinkle in Time

  124. 124.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    There have been a lot of ageist attacks on President Biden, including from the left. But I sincerely wonder if a younger president, more concerned about his/her legacy, would have had the courage to make the difficult decision he did. I hope this leads people to be less ageist.

    I thinks it’s more Biden being such an Washington old timer saw the once in a lifetime opportunity Trump gave him to get the US out of Afghanistan. What Biden did was High Broderism Judo were he turned “Both Side do it” against the press.

  125. 125.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @RaflW:

    Would love to give that guy a swirlie. Some people just don’t get enough peer-based social correction in high school.

  126. 126.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @RaflW: sometimes pundits remind me of the aging actor/singer/comedian who is booked on a chat show or podcast because they have a memoir coming out, or just out of pity, and they hit their old catch phrase or mention their mid-level hit from X number of years ago and kind of sadly wait for applause, and sometimes the host picks up on it and gets a sad pity-clap going, and sometimes not.
    When all anybody wants to hear is “Did you really sleep with Elvis/Cher/Milton Berle?”

  127. 127.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Clearly, this will all be fixed when RWNJs are shamed by nonviolent parades, nonviolent protests, songs, drum circles and giant puppets. The imagery will cause them to change course.

  128. 128.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @glory b:

    I’ll take this time to point out that while I like Sirius, it burns me that the right wing station is still called the “Patriot Channel,” the left leaning one is called “Sirius Progressive.”

    Used to drive me crazy, do they still even have the “Progressive” channel? I thought they folded it into something else. I pretty much quit listening to the channel when they fired Frank Conniff from the Fugelsang show, which I gather was cancelled a while after.

  129. 129.

    RaflW

    @glory b: I’m a sirius subscriber. Your post got me to have a look around and I think I’m going to write to them to question this obvious bias.

    If your question relates to a specific SiriusXM department or you have suggestions please email [email protected]

    I may also fill out a comment on the Investor Relations page, a tactic I use when I find it difficult to track down a better email than (basically) ‘[email protected]’.

  130. 130.

    NotMax

    @RaflW

    does anyone call creative types ‘bobos’ except him?

    Nope. That whole bit went over like a flotilla of lead balloons on Jupiter.

  132. 132.

    germy

    WASHINGTON (AP) – House Democrats have promoted Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to vice chairwoman of a committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, placing her in a leadership spot on the panel as some members of the GOP caucus are threatening to oust her for participating.

  133. 133.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Peale:

    Pregnancy is about to be super expensive in Texas. How are insurance policies for obstetricians or gynecologists going to be underwritten? You realize that now each miscarriage is going to result in some asshole trolling through medical records looking for abortions, and the quack experts will start saying “well, this one doesn’t look like an abortion, but I’ll serve as your expert for a malpractice claim”.

    That way, they get to pretend to NOT be abortion trolls, but instead purveyors of a valuable and needed public service.

  134. 134.

    Baud

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I don’t care that much about what types of protests or other direct actions people take.  What I detest are when people advocate for those actions in lieu of voting for Democrats, and when they advocate for others to do the same.  Especially so when the issue is one where the two parties have clear differences like abortion rights.

    I just have very little interest in people who refuse to take the most important step to help themselves and others and then talk about how victimized they are.

  135. 135.

    Geminid

    I saw that the Senate will vote on Ken Salazar for Ambassador to Mexico today. A former Colorado Attorney General and U.S. Senator for that state, Salazar is well qualified for this important job. He was also Secretary of the Interior in the Obama administration.

    Ken Salazar is a native of Alamosa, Colorado. His brother John represented the surrounding 3rd Dostrict in Congess 2004-2011. John Salazar lost a close election in 2010 to Scott Tipton, who lost his Republican primary last year to Lauren Boebert.

  141. 141.

    gene108

    @Peale:

    It’s a nice sentiment to go after OB’s with primarily upper middle class white women clients. The problem is a civil suite for at least $10k will involve more than filing something in small claims court. A normal person will need a lawyer to navigate the court system. I doubt many lawyers will be willing to take this sort of case up pro bono. People trying to do this will need money to sustain a lawsuit for however many months or years it will take with the inevitable motions that come with this kind of lawsuit.

    The forced birth crowd will have unlimited billionaire bucks behind them to sue anyone they want, and pay handsomely their legal counsel.

    It’s hard to fight against an enemy, where money is no object for them, but we do and somehow succeed from time to time.

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Sen. Whitehouse has been on the confluence of dark money backing Republican court appointments for years. I wish other Senators would take it as seriously.

    I think if Congress tightened up the conflict of interest rules, governing when a judge must recuse themselves from hearing a case, and have it cover the SCOTUS as well, some level of abuse these Republican fanatics undertake might get curtailed.

  142. 142.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: Window-dressing, unless she has some kind of veto

    ETA: Pelosi is counting on, as Nixon might have said, her ability to hate. I think it’s a good bet.

  146. 146.

    ArchTeryx

    @JMG: That’s a dangerous game to play. Some tornadoes do not announce themselves like that before wrecking shit. Read the reports of the Tri-State Tornado, one of the largest and most powerful tornadoes in recorded history. Most had no clue what they were seeing and hearing was a tornado until it steamrollered them. Even people out on open fields with an unobstructed view did not know until it literally tore them to pieces. The accounts will make your blood run cold.

    The roar is often not even audible until the tornado is right on top of you. You’ll hear it, all right – seconds before impact.  Just like with the TST.

    Not convinced? There’s another video out there of a man filming an EF-4 tornado approaching his house, right up until the moment of impact. He survived – barely. His wife and neighbor, taking shelter when the tornado hit, did not.

  147. 147.

    Betty Cracker

    Re: Darmofal’s tweet in the OP: Biden has definitely been a mixed bag on foreign policy during his career. IMO, he was mostly and sometimes catastrophically wrong as a senator. That he evolved as VP and now as POTUS is to his great credit, IMO.

    I’m not sure I’d chalk it up to lack of concern with a legacy due to age. If I had to guess, I’d wager Biden’s concern with his legacy is above average. He recognized that Afghanistan was an unwinnable shit-show and resolved not to kick the can down the road, perhaps partly because he really couldn’t after Trump’s fuckery anyway.

    That was courageous, and I think history will record that — assuming the country remains a going concern as a democracy by arresting the current slide into right wing authoritarianism. THAT question will determine Biden’s legacy.

  148. 148.

    Kay

    “Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DC

    The pro-life movement’s pivot from “we want to protect babies AND mothers” to “if you dare get an abortion we will bankrupt everyone you love” was remarkably quick.”

    Must not know any of them personally. They are sanctiminious scolds who will absolutely be on board for monitoring every pregnancy and they’re thrilled they now have a huge hammer to hit people with. Never forget the treacly, soft focus mommy and baby stuff came with mandatory vaginal probes. Forget keeping them out of your bedroom. They’ll be in the examining room. Well, them and their huge legal team, now.

  155. 155.

    James E Powell

    @SFAW:

    Collins may lift an eyebrow at the brazen & crude manners of Trump & his slavish followers, but she agrees with their policies. So do the majority of Maine voters.

    I don’t know a damn thing about Maine or its politics, I’m just reading the box scores. Is it all about the whiteness?

  158. 158.

    cain

    @Kay: ​
     
    It will be any yahoo looking to cash in – and conservative men and women will be as much targets as anyone else. These “moral hunters” won’t give a shit – everyone will have to watch their backs.
    Never mind that even women visiting are also at risk – businesswomen, ceos, attorneys – everyone with any history could be fucked.

  159. 159.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: Yep. Having had to spend time with various low-life forms of MIC “contractors” over the years (sadly, I’ve never met higher-quality contractors; I’m sure they exist), that is EXACTLY what is going to happen. There are entire worlds created around scamming government programs, and it ain’t poor people doing it. Every single one of these people were, at best, sociopaths. They will happily ruin lives, even kill you and your family, if it means one more dollar in their bank account. This Texas program is perfect for them.

  162. 162.

    cain

    @John S.: ​
     
    GenX checking in – same here – I instantly disliked Reagan. Frankly, nobody honestly I felt in high school was paying much attention to the man from what I can tell. We never really talked politics back then.

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @James E Powell:

    Collins may lift an eyebrow at the brazen & crude manners of Trump & his slavish followers, but she agrees with their policies. So do the majority of Maine voters.

    Paul LePage would suggest there are a lot of ME voters who like trump and his politics, but not a majority– PLP needed spoiler candidates both times, IIRC. And Biden beat trump state-wide by the just about the same margin as Collins beat Gideon.
    I think besides Collins being a very talented fraud (I myself underestimated her for years), and a romantic notion about “old fashioned New England Republicans” that spreads far beyond NE or ME, Collins benefited from the advantage of incumbency and just habit. A lot like Lieberman in ’06

  164. 164.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    Isn’t nativism at least a relative of white supremacy? And I know her opponent was a white female. I meant that Republicans are very much the White People’s Party and Maine is a very white state

    Is it because Maine doesn’t have a big city?

  165. 165.

    germy

    Candace Owens says Suzanna from the company that refused her a Covid test is racist.

    She also called the CEO of American Booksellers Assoc racist for criticizing her book.

    Yet, this same boot licking ? testified before Congress that anti Black racism doesn’t exist in America. pic.twitter.com/Jwo6hwDPtA

    — Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) September 2, 2021

  166. 166.

    Baud

    @James E Powell: Maine is very rural.  But as Jim mentions, they voted for Biden (and Hillary)* and they now have a white female Dem governor.

    *Maine splits their electoral votes, and the redder district gave one vote to Trump in both elections.

  169. 169.

    snoey

    @WaterGirl: ​
     

    There was the Wapo anti-coup op-ed signed by all former defense secretaries. It was later reported that Dick Cheney was the organizer.
    Occam’s razor says that the Cheneys, however bad their other politics, are actual patriotic Americans and know more about the coup than they can say.

  171. 171.

    ArchTeryx

    @Baud: And that’s a MASSIVE issue in Maine.  They’re extremely snooty about native vs. outsider, like a fair amount of Old New England. (Vermont is similar but are not as bone-deep nasty about it).

    Anecdata: My mother wanted to move from Michigan to Maine once.  She knew a native there and asked how many years it’d take before they accepted her as one of the natives. Her friend just laughed and said, “Dearie… try three generations.”

    That’s what Sara Gideon was fighting against. Between that and the power of incumbency, it was a losing fight from the beginning. The moment Collins pulled that card on her, the hand and election were lost.

  172. 172.

    SFAW

    @James E Powell:

    As I understand it, Maine is more-or-less divided into two areas: Southern Maine (Portland — the REAL Portland, not like that Left Coast pretender), which is fairly liberal, and northern Maine, which is redneck-y. Northern Maine was how Paul LePage won two terms (with an assist from the liberal Elliot Cutler splitting the Dem vote). She was born in Caribou, and I think — MomSense can correct me — that she lives in/near Millinocket. Both those towns are way north.

    As Baud noted, the “Sara Gideon weren’t born here” was, apparently, a thing during the 2020 election. Did it affect the result? Don’t know for certain, but seems reasonable.

    ETA: ArchTeryx beat me to it, and has a better summation.

  173. 173.

    cain

    The twitter is telling me I should be angry at Merrick Garland – and they have a new hero, Sally Yates. I’m really kind of tired of all this projection on singular “heroes”. I remember the whole thing around Mueller – and of course that turned into a dud.

    Garland made his fame on going after organized crime if I recall. I don’t know what is required right now to go after Trump but as long as Biden has confidence in Garland – I’m willing to keep giving support. Twitter is filled with rage right now – and is being incoherent.

  176. 176.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: I never liked Reagan, but in high school that put me very much in the minority–most of my classmates loved him. This was in western Fairfax County, VA, which was then a deeply Republican area though it is not any more. The experience was formative for me, gave me an instinctual feeling that most people will always disagree with me, possibly with great agitation, about politics so I need to watch my step.

  177. 177.

    RaflW

    @rikyrah: Susan Collins has run a decades-long scam. She has lied to her constituents, and I’d bet there are moderates around the country who’ve funded her because they believed her lies about being a ‘pro-choice Republican.’

    It was all bullshit. All of it. She’s a morally depraved as her fellow caucus members. She really is no better. Nope.

  181. 181.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Captain C: I’ve seen some of that on facebook. When Biden and Harris both made statements about how terrible the Texas law was and how the Democratic Party has to fight it, I see responses like “Why don’t you do something about it? Dems always whine about this and then let it happen”

    Fucktards – the time to do something about it was 5 years ago. Now we’re locked into a generation or more of this bullshit.

  182. 182.

    James E Powell

    @cain:

    As I mentioned yesterday, I picked a good day to deactivate my twitter.

    Our current and everlasting problem generally is that our people do not vote at the same rate, do not vote a straight ticket, and do not vote the whole ballot. The other side’s voters do.

    Our current and everlasting problem on the issue of abortion rights is that the people who want to make it a crime vote every time and consider abortion the one & only issue. In contrast, pro-choice voters will vote Republican for reasons. Abortion rights are a consideration, but nowhere near the top of the list.

  184. 184.

    RaflW

    @cain:

    I’m really kind of tired of all this projection on singular “heroes”.

    Amen! For decades the Democratic party has relied on a handful of heroes to keep our problems at bay. When we should have been building power the way the GOP has (I mean the power part, not the lying and bad faith bullshitting).

    As a tweet pointed out yesterday (roughly, from memory): Run for Something raised $2.5M in the last cycle and helped elect 250+ candidates. Amy McGrath raised $88M and lost by over 19 points.

    We don’t invest where it can matter. That has to change, now.

    (ftr I donated directly to RFS and did a couple of rounds of funding candidates they highlighted for 2020. And I will again. Join me!)

  186. 186.

    Woodrow/asim

    @cain: Twitter is filled with rage right now – and is being incoherent.

    There are many people who have more interest in vengeance — even blind vengeance — over anything like justice.

    Because vengeance/lashing out feels “good,” it also sells well — see “owning the ‘libs’.” It’s a vicious cycle, both online and off.

  189. 189.

    Captain C

    @RaflW:

    What an absolute load of hooey. Next up from David: Nerds make bullies punch them?

    I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Brooks has a physical humiliation fetish, and that he projects it onto everyone else.

  190. 190.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: The American left has a loud contingent who are just itching to turn on their own allies to demonstrate moral superiority. It’s not all the extreme left, some of it is centrists who desperately want to be “bipartisan” for some reason, and the two camps both tend to see the Democratic Party as hostage to the other camp.

    I think part of that is not bad–it’s that we actually do care about substantive issues rather than just about winning one for the team. When the team isn’t doing exactly what you want on all the issues, that’s upsetting. But we can lose sight of the fact that winning one for the team is the only path to getting progress on issues.

  191. 191.

    Just Chuck

    @SFAW:

    If some non-LEO person is trying to detain me, and I’m in fear of my life, can I respond as if I’m in fear of my life?

    Only if they’re darker than you.

  192. 192.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: while the democrat congressional slate still spans from cori bush to kyrsten sinema, i ask, where are the gqp’s moderates

    i remember when jiltin joe liebermann’s fellow nutmegger chris shays was in gqp house leadership, but now isn’t scalise in that role

    the democrat party is still a melange, & it’s the gqp that is exclusionary (contra the lamestream media)

  194. 194.

    Ksmiami

    @Woodrow/asim: people are hurt and enraged. It’s not incoherence- most of the comments are women telling men that this was wholly predictable but they called us hysterical etc… besides we can channel this into a push forward if it’s harnessed

  195. 195.

    Yarrow

    Just an FYI, Texas state elections are in 2022. Governor, Attorney General, state Representatives, etc. As awful as this new law is, now is the time to start working to elect people who can overturn it. If you want to change things, change who’s in charge in Texas.

  196. 196.

    Geminid

    @MomSense: There are plenty of good Democratic Gen X politicians in Congress. House Caucas Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (NY) is one. Veronica Escobar (TX), Chrissy Houlihan (PA), Ted Lieu (CA), and Elaine Luria (VA) are four more, and there are many others. Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke are of Generation X.

    We’ll be seeing a lot of Elaine Luria (VA-2) in the Select Committee on 1/6 hearings.

  197. 197.

    Just Chuck

    @RaflW: “The Creative Class” is always the first to get rounded up in the killing fields.  Brooks is just another Nazi with a polite tone.

  198. 198.

    Immanentize

    @WaterGirl: Liz Cheney = bi-partisan subpoena approval. The committee rules require subpoenas to be issued by “the agreement of the chair and vice chair.” And if they disagree, by vote of a majority of the committee.  All this bruhaha about the validity of subpoenas for phone records (extremely common and mundane) will be solved by adding a republican vice chair

  200. 200.

    RaflW

    @Betty Cracker: I mean, can you imagine if Kamala Harris had to pull the plug on Afghanistan? As in, the racist garbage howler monkeys would be so far out of control we’d be under martial law in a matter of days.

    I am not saying that she doesn’t have the chops. I’m saying that Biden recognizes that he has a reservoir of goodwill in the nation that includes whatever slim wedge of R voters who aren’t guzzling the Qoolaide, plus most all Dems and indies.

    Ms. Harris is a fine Dem and a good leader, but she – like Barack – is subject to all the white supremacy toxicity that he gets to skate around. He used that to end our wasteful, GOP-invented trashfire in Afg.

  201. 201.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Its like gay people were before AIDS revealed so many — the scolds know many women who have had abortions. They are just not out of the closet to those asses.

  202. 202.

    RaflW

    @KSinMA: Is there a way to take that up a notch? It grosses me out to be suggesting this, but why not sue pregnant conservatives in Texas? If they travel to an abortion-on-demand state, accuse them of secretly visiting a clinic on a scouting trip.

    What are the penalties for filing a false accusation? I’m gonna guess nothing, because the R-dominated TX lege wouldn’t want their informant corps to pay damages for being wrong.

    (Seriously, this makes my stomach clench. The idea of doing this is gross. But there probably has to be drastic blowback to conservative women and their husbands before maybe, maybe they reconsider.

    Also, as @Immanentize observes, conservative women do get abortions. Go after that. (Damn this just is so awful. I don’t want to harass women who make legal choices about their own care. But the hypocrisy potential is life-threatening for the women who can’t afford a ‘spa weekend’ out of state).

  203. 203.

    Immanentize

    @cain: Gen X song of songs:

    People starving in India
    Fighting in Baghdad
    We don’t care
    We’d ask her ourselves
    But it’s none of our business, besides
    We don’t dare

    Who does Lisa
    Who does Lisa
    Who does Lisa like?

    Who Does Lisa Like

    — the image of the Firestone parking lot is just perfect.

  205. 205.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Jared Golden (ME-2) was one of a few Democrats to win in a district carried by trump. Geographically, the 2nd Maine is the largest Congressional district east of the Mississippi.

  206. 206.

    Immanentize

    @RaflW: Personally, I’m going to talk about the children — kids who are raped, or forced into incest, or get pregnant before they really know what a regular period is. 13 years olds forced to have babies. There is no rape or incest exception in the law.

  207. 207.

    Chris Johnson

    This is all about vigilantism. Which is a tool of straight up fascism: it’s here, this is the time to pick sides and understand what this is about.

    Which does NOT mean the end goal is to set up opposite fascism and abdicate any notion of rule of law. Stuff like the progress on the 1/6 thing, where they’re now going to look into the phone records of seditionists, is important: it’s possible to refuse fascism.

    Lots of the ‘look, dems did not defend Roe v Wade and don’t deserve your support, we must fight in the streets now’ is simply enemy action. Russia drives it, indirectly and directly (Twitter? Directly. Delete your twitter and facebook)

    The reason is, Russia hopes that if we are obliterated by Covid and descend into open guerrilla warfare on each other, we’ll collapse and they will be in a fine position to benefit from global temperate zone shift and their oil reserves.

    This is completely stupid of them and I’m happy to see they’re getting clobbered by covid themselves. But this is why they are doing it, and there’s always an underlying motivation of causing the USA to have LESS law, MORE conflict, MORE domestic terrorism, MORE fascism and vigilantes.

    It’s not because it’s supposed to be good for us: if the right started to seize all power, Russia would immediately turn around and start funding Democrats and try to make us as violent as possible. Right now, the Republicans and Qanons (itself a Russian operation) are in danger of being squished by law (as they are criminals) so Russia will do everything it can to rush us into the most extreme conflict they can manufacture, to the delight of the right-wingers who want to do that.

    It’s not to make the right-wingers ultimately win. It’s a trap, designed to make us fight them more unlawfully. If they did win serious power Russia would be helping us as long as we meant to fight the right-wingers in a terroristic way.

    To not play this game, use rule of law and hold people accountable. This is not a country of vigilantes and anybody who tries to make it be that, are in the wrong.

  208. 208.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Ugh, I was at a legal dinner with a bunch of them and they were talking about the fake health clinic they donate to. Okay, so the women “earn” baby stuff- things like cribs and pack and plays and car seats. They “earn” it by showing up for religious indoctrination sessions and Right wing “parenting classes”

    I was sitting there like seething. My daughter, who didn’t used to be political but is a liberal voter, described it this way to me “why are they always talking about us?” She thinks being the subject of their moralizing, self- aggrandizing “charity” work is itself intrusive and controlling. She sees herself as in the broad group of people they discuss.

  209. 209.

    Llelldorin

    @Cameron: Short for “bourgeois bohemian” — his ludicrously cutesy name for wealthy liberals. Like many “soft conservative” types, he basically took his own attitudes and biases and repackaged them as though he’d discovered something interesting.

  210. 210.

    catclub

    @MJS: ​
     

    There has to be some fuckery available to us that can gum up this monstrosity of a law.

    The first website they set up for snitching has already been trolled.

  211. 211.

    RaflW

    @Immanentize: Dang. That does seem like an important leverage point.

    I also take Chris @207’s point.

    On reflection, I don’t mean to advocate that people sue rando Christian women. But in the way that fundie pastors that rail against LGBTQ people but cruise grindr sometimes get their public due, if there’s a strategic public figure who potentially runs afoul of this TX law, expose them.

  213. 213.

    catclub

    @RaflW: ​
     

    Except I don’t. I hate violence, but the feeling of revulsion I have for him makes me want to swing a roundhouse — if I even had the vaguest idea how!

    Just remember that in a bar fight, virtually everyone starts with a right.
    so change it up and kick em in the nads with your left foot.

  214. 214.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think we WILDLY over-estimate the extent to which “normies” pay attention. This idea that they’re hugely sensitive to the specifics of Tweets is just not accurate.

    It has to be literal repetitive screaming before they even notice. It cannot be loud enough or blunt enough. They are not political obsessives. They follow other things. Anyone who knows who AOC is is not your audience.

  215. 215.

    Geminid

    @Immanentize: Xeni Jardin (b. 1970):

           “Me when I was 20: ‘F#ck the system!’

     Me now: ‘For Heaven’s sake, don’t let the system collapse!'”

  216. 216.

    germy

    Important thread from ProPublica reporter:

    BREAKING: We found 1000s of Trump supporters taking over local GOP positions — an unprecedented grassroots groundswell devoted to Trump’s insistence that the 2020 election was stolen & Republicans need to stop that from happening again https://t.co/btjMNXvft3

    — Isaac Arnsdorf (@iarnsdorf) September 2, 2021

  217. 217.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Llelldorin: What’s fun is that he literally lifted the term from the French.  Except the French term describes someone who is more of a Trustafarian than a well-off liberal.

  221. 221.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think of the cable tv freak out over Afghanistan. Two solid weeks of screaming. When they asked Biden voters in California, they were “oh, I guess it was fine. He’s trying”. They don’t watch cable news. They hate news :)

  222. 222.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Ksmiami: besides we can channel this into a push forward if it’s harnessed

    If you look up above you’d see I posted a number of orgs supporting abortion rights, already on the ground in TX, that could use support. I’m preparing a similar, longer post for my FB tonight, and likely my wee political newsletter as well.

    I’m already in motion, to get eyes on that push. I do not say what I said in ignorance of that rage, and the lack of hearing women, esp. Black Women, got on these issues — I worked Pro-Choice issues for a time myself, and this is a situation close to me for reasons I’ll keep to myself.

    I’m not the person to harness this, at this point in my life. Yet I will speak for focusing to do that harnessing, over allowing vengeance — for that is what I see a lot of, today — to overtake the groundwork so desperately needed.

  223. 223.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Llelldorin: so, bobo makes as much academic sense as the ewing theory, bechdel test, & fairy pixy dreamgirl

    always knew david brooks was as idiotic & damaged as sportsboi bill simmons, nathan rabin, malcolm gladwell, alison bechdel, et al

  224. 224.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @RaflW: ​
      Go after GOP men for funding abortions. Report them on the hotlines. First, you know some of them have done it. Second, as LBJ (pace, raven) supposedly said about his opponent fucking pigs, “I just want to make him deny it.”

  225. 225.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    How long did it take before 70% of people polled described Trump as a liar? Two solid years of multiple daily lies and every single high profile liberal yelling that he is a liar.

    That’s the grunt work required and there was no cleverness or messaging at all. It was “he is a LIAR” over and over and over. It’s just not what they pay attention to.

  230. 230.

    artem1s

    @MJS:

    There has to be some fuckery available to us that can gum up this monstrosity of a law.

    There is, but we need to stop pretending that this isn’t an attack on all reproductive care and only affects women of childbearing age. I’m sick to the teeth with the Pro-Choice movement rolling out some Sandra Fluke example of someone who ‘needs’ reproductive care for the ‘right’ reasons.  Time to stop parsing around.  Health care should be a basic right even if it’s for women or trans or men who aren’t straight. No more half apology statements about supporting women’s choice but being personally opposed.  Opposed to what? Sluttery? Cadillac Welfare Queen daily trips to the PP Abortionplex? This approach is misogynistic to the core and only leads to watering down what few laws women have to back up the basic constitutional rights every man has at conception.

    No more parsing out ‘good’ abortions and ‘bad’ abortions and arguing about whether the pill or IUD is an abortifact. The point of contraception and abortions is to NOT have babies – contraception is in the view of the American Taliban an abortifact for that reason  alone.  If you can’t honestly say you would support a woman’s health care decisions without exception or brackets or moral clauses or timelines, you are not supporting equal rights for all humans.

  232. 232.

    James E Powell

    @WaterGirl:

    Absolutely it’s us.

    From Catch-22, the greatest novel about America.

    These three men who hated [Clevinger] spoke his language and wore his uniform, but he saw their loveless faces set immutably into cramped, mean lines of hostility and understood instantly that nowhere in the world, not in all the fascist tanks or planes or submarines, not in the bunker behind the machine guns or mortars or behind the blowing flame throwers, not even among all the expert gunners of the crack Hermann Goering Antiaircraft Division or among the grisly connivers in all the beer halls in Munich and everywhere else, were there men who hated him more.

  233. 233.

    Jeffro

    @MomSense: My age cohort, Gen X, had their brains wiped by Ronald Raygun. Look at all the Gen X Republican politicians. That’s why. Yes, there are exceptions but, for the most part, Dem pols are Boomers or Millenials.

    Agreed (as a fellow GenXer).  Reagan kids who grew up to be Gingrich teens – blech.

  234. 234.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose:

    bobo makes as much academic sense as the ewing theory, bechdel test, & fairy pixy dreamgirl

    I had to look up the Ewing Theory first, but I disagree. Unlike “Bobo”, each offers a descriptive term for a unique idea or concept.

    “Bobo” is a French term that Brooks misappropriated as a slur against the fancy pansies in glasses that Nazis and other monsters (Khmer Rouge, etc.) turn into an enemy of the state (with help from self-hating folks like Brooks).

    It’s a slur against the “creative class”, not an analysis.

  235. 235.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cain: Garland made his fame on going after organized crime if I recall. I don’t know what is required right now to go after Trump but as long as Biden has confidence in Garland – I’m willing to keep giving support.

    and Timothy McVeigh, IIRC. I’m open to the idea that Garland could be more aggressive and creative, but as a non-lawyer I believe that an indictment that doesn’t lead to a conviction can be even more dangerous than a case that’s not prosecuted; correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the reason Biden is going to get kicked around by the under-the-radar LieberCrat (on foreign policy) Bob Menendez got off the legal hook because Bob McDonnell of VA got his conviction overturned. That’s why I prefer Congressional hearings to criminal prosecutions for the trump crew. But as ever, events, dear boy, events! will intervene.

  236. 236.

    ArchTeryx

    @RaflW: This is war, pure and simple. Their sides’ handmaidens do not and SHOULD NOT get a free pass. They helped vote in this insanity. They should face the consequences. They’d never hesitate in suing YOU.

  237. 237.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:

    ne thing the Republicans have on us is that they never lose focus on who their true enemies are.

    and they vote, from dog catcher up to President. Mona Charen was on the Hayes program last night, and I was reminded of the slogan she proposed for Bush (I) in ’92: “Only Four More Years”. (For the youngs, Poppy had betraaayed the Reagan Revolution by agreeing to a small tax hike)

  238. 238.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @RaflW:

    Also, as @Immanentize observes, conservative women do get abortions. Go after that. (Damn this just is so awful. I don’t want to harass women who make legal choices about their own care. But the hypocrisy potential is life-threatening for the women who can’t afford a ‘spa weekend’ out of state).

    I’m so damn old, I remember Susan Carpeneter MacMillan– a nouveau et très riche professional cable guest who attached herself to Paula Jones. She claimed to be a long-time pro-life activist. It came out she had had an abortion in college, and she said that was why she became pro-life, out of regret. It came out she had had another abortion while a married rich lady in her thirties, and she said it was “therapeutic miscarriage” under a doctor’s supervision because of her health.

  242. 242.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: My experience of “normies” is that they’re more likely to say “both sides are crazy/extreme”–which really means “politics is nasty and unpleasant and I don’t like to bother with it.” And it is. One of the goals of these people who disrupt School Board meetings is to make sure it’s as unpleasant as possible, to reduce participation.

  243. 243.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud:

    @James E Powell: Apparently, a big factor was that her (white female) opponent wasn’t a Maine “native.”

    Another major factor, IIRC, is her constituent service operation, which has been very active and effective for years. In a state the population of ME, it doesn’t take long to reach the point where near everyone is someone, knows someone, or knows someone who knows someone, who got help from Collins or her staff. Retail politics at its most basic, and damn hard for a challenger to dent.

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